the university, he left the table to get them a bottle of wine; but, on his way to the cellar, he fell into reflection, forgot his errand and his company, went to his chamber, put on his surplice, and proceeded to the chapel. Sometimes he would go into the street half dressed, and, on discovering his condition, run back in great haste, much abashed. Often, while strolling in his garden, he would suddenly stop, and then run rapidly to his room, and begin to write, standing, on the first piece of paper that presented itself. Intending to dine in the public hall, he would go out in a brown study, take the wrong turn, walk awhile, and then return to his room, having totally forgotten the dinner. Once having dismounted from his horse to lead him up a hill, the horse slipped his head out of the bridle; but Newton, oblivious, never discovered it, till, on reaching a toll-gate at the top of the hill, he turned to remount, he perceived that the bridle which he held in his hand had no horse attached to it. His secretary records that his forgetfulness of his dinner was an excellent thing for his old house-keeper, who "sometimes found both dinner and supper scarcely tasted of, which the old woman has very pleasantly and mumpingly gone away with." On getting out of bed in the morning, he has been observed to sit on his bed-side for hours, without dressing himself, utterly absorbed in thought.

Buffon said: Genius is patience. Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive, declared that he surpassed the majority of mankind only in patience. Newton also ascribed his success in interpreting nature solely to his patience. Being asked, one day, how he had discovered the law of gravitation, he replied :— "By incessantly thinking about it."

Again, on being told that he had discovered so much that nothing remained to be discovered by others, he said :

"Beat the bushes well and you will start plenty of game." A short time before his death, he made that sublime observation which has been so often quoted:

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a prettier shell

than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

It is related that, entertaining at dinner in London the French ambassador, when some of the English guests were in doubt which ought to be toasted first, the King of England or the King of France, Sir Isaac solved the difficulty thus:

"Let us drink," said he, "the health of all honest persons, to whatever country they belong. We are all friends, because we unanimously aim at the only object worthy of man, which is the knowledge of truth. We are all also of the same religion, since, leading a simple life, we conform ourselves to what is right, and we endeavor sincerely to give to the Supreme Being that worship, which, according to our feeble lights, we are persuaded will please him most."

In the days of his poverty at the university, he was often urged to increase his income by taking orders in the church. He steadily refused, on the ground that his religious opinions were not in conformity with those of the Church of England. He was a Unitarian. He expressly says, in his articles of religious belief, that worship should be addressed only to God, the Father. If he had lived in our day, we should style him a Unitarian of the Channing and Everett school.

In 1789, when the news reached him that his mother was dangerously ill of a malignant fever, he abandoned his studies and hurried home to attend her. He sat up with her night after night, administering her medicines with his own hands, and dressed her blisters with admirable tenderness and dexterity. She sunk under the disease, despite his skill and care.

The story of his dog Diamond throwing down a lighted candle among his papers, by which the labors of years were consumed, and of Newton's calmly saying, "O Diamond, Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done," is not true. The candle was left by his own carelessness in such a position, that it set fire to the papers without the intervention of a dog, an animal he never kept. Nor did he contemplate his loss with the slightest approach to philosophic calmness. On the contrary, it almost drove him out of his senses, and it was a month before he had regained his tranquillity. The story, also,

of his using his wife's finger, in a fit of absence of mind, to press down the tobacco in his pipe, is liable to two slight objections: 1. He never had a wife. 2. He never smoked. Being once asked why he never smoked or took snuff, he answered:

"I will not make to myself any necessities."

Gentle as his temper usually was, he was capable of honest anger. Being accused one day of having robbed another astronomer of the credit of his researches, he flew into a downright passion, and called his impudent accuser many hard names, puppy being the most innocent of them."

His salary, as Master of the Mint, was a thousand pounds a year, or five thousand dollars, a very handsome income for that day. Before his death he gave away two considerable landed estates to poor relations, and his whole life was strewn with benefactions. But, owing to his excellent management of his affairs, he died worth thirty-two thousand pounds, equal to three or four times that sum in the present currency of England. It was all divided by will among his relations and dependants. The British government marked its respect for his memory by bestowing his office in the mint upon his nephew.

The final biography of this illustrious man remains to be written. The Life of Newton, by Sir David Brewster, is a chaos which serves rather to conceal than to exhibit the greatness of his understanding, and the childlike loveliness of his character. Carlyle had been better employed on such a subject than in laboriously distilling the court gossip of Prussia.

Sir Isaac Newton died March 20th, 1727, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, with all the pomp and ceremony due to the remains of the most eminent philosopher of his time. The monument erected to his memory in the abbey bears an inscription in Latin, of which the following is a translation:

Here lies

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, KNIGHT,

Who, by a vigor of mind almost supernatural,
First demonstrated

The motions and figures of the planets,

The paths of the comets, and the tides of the ocean.

He diligently investigated

The different refrangibilities of the rays of light, And the properties of the colors to which they give rise. An assiduous, sagacious, and faithful interpreter

Of Nature, Antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures, He asserted in his philosophy the majesty of God, And exhibited in his conduct the simplicity of the Gospel. Let mortals rejoice

That there has existed such and so great

An ornament of the human race.

GALILEO.

Of late years, editors, hard pushed for a comment on passing events, have fallen into the practice of saying, "The world moves." I propose to relate the origin of the saying.

In the winter of 1633, a venerable man, enfeebled by disease and borne down by the weight of sixty-nine years, was travelling from Florence to Rome, a toilsome, horseback journey of a hundred and forty-six miles. He had been summoned from his home in this inclemment season by that dread tribunal, the Inquisition, whose displeasure he had provoked. The Inquisi

tion was then in the plenitude of its power. In no land that acknowledged the papal supremacy was there any escape from its omnipresent eye, and its omnipotent arm; for it wielded, at once, all the spiritual authority of the church and all the temporal power of the state.

It was the great Galileo who was journeying toward Rome to submit to the questionings of the Inquisition. His offence was that he knew more than the doctors of the Inquisition knew. He had spent his life in the laborious study of nature. The son of a poor Italian musician, he had exhibited in his youth that aptitude for mechanics which we observe in the boyhood of Newton, as well as a passionate love of literature and music which Newton never possessed. His father, besides being poor, had a family of six children to maintain, and could therefore afford his son very little aid in his studies. Galileo, however, made up in zeal and diligence what he lacked in advantages. Besides mastering the Latin authors, he became really proficient in drawing, and learned to play on several instruments with so much facility and taste, that he was urged to devote his life to music. At the age of eighteen, he showed